The January 6 rioters are criminals

The January 6 rioters who breached police lines should have been shot.

The survivors should serve long sentences.

This week the Department of Justice recommended that Guy Reffitt serve a sentence of 15 years for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He was a leader of the Texas Three Percenters and he was convicted at trial. His own helmet camera provided much of the evidence that convicted him. He recorded himself saying 

"We're all going to drag them motherfuckers out kicking and screaming. I don't give a shit. I just want to see Pelosi's head hit every fucking stair on the way out. Fuck yeah. And Mitch McConnell, too. . . .We've got the numbers to make it happen. We've got a fucking president. We don't need much more. We just get rid of them motherfuckers and start over."

The Justice Department asked that extra time be added because his actions met the definition of terrorism. 

I think he is getting off easy. He took up arms against the United States and led others to join him.

"We're coming through. Get these motherfuckers!"

I wish the Capitol Police and whatever other police agencies were there had done their job. They remind me of the Uvalde police. The Capitol has doors and windows and rioters were forcing their way through them. Rioters were violently breaching the perimeter. People in front with weapons should have been been commanded to stop, and when they pushed forward, shot. Being killed is what happens when you attack police and invade a public building protected with armed security.

Americans have learned this rule of thumb when encountering a policeman: Don't fight them. Don't frighten them. Obey. We have seen the videos involving police encounters, especially with Black men. The man attempts to flee or he struggles with the police officer. We wish he had just complied. He might still be alive. Instead, he gets killed and the shooting is considered justified. After all, the policeman was attacked and feared for his life.

The January 6 rioters attacked the police. Ashli Babbitt, the one person who was shot and killed by a security guard, was part of a crowd that had already gotten well into to the Capitol. The crowd was smashing through a door to enter the chamber of the House of Representatives. Some 60 to 80 House Members and staffers were sheltering inside that chamber. The officer who shot her did his job. He protected the institution and the people counting on him for security. The rioters got that far because at the first perimeters the security did not do theirs. 

I was part of a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1969. I may be somewhere in this photo. It never occurred to me that we could storm public buildings and get away with it. I would get shot. 

There was a general lack of moral clarity both at the time of the January 6 insurrection and still today because Trump had invited them to go there and "be wild." This is unfortunate. However, there was surely moral and legal clarity at the time rioters began breaking barriers, smashing doors and windows, and attacking police officers. That is when this should have been stopped. They should have been resisted with lethal force. 

The rioters' gallows for Mike Pence was a silent but powerful message to the world. It said that the rioters defy democracy and will kill to do it. That is a bad message.  A different message would have been in photographs of a dozen bodies of rioters at the Capitol doors. That message would be that Americans defend our democracy. It is a tough message, but it is why we have a military. We defend our democracy.

We missed our chance then. It isn't too late to send a message for next time. Send the message that Americans consider people who stage violent attacks on our people and institutions to be dangerous criminals. We send them to prison.